Quote:
Originally Posted by Question Mark
I don't recall saying or intimating that magicians are an ethnic group. They are, however, a group/subset of performers.
Does Dr, Seuss' portrayal of magicians here tell children that being a magician is weird or exotic and that it is a less noble profession than being a mayor in a top hat or a musician in a band?
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Did magicians get the right to vote in the US in living memory? Are magicians being beaten up on the street because people blame them for the magician virus?
I started typing a long list of instances of current and past racist discrimination here, but it shouldn't be necessary.
Imagine yourself being a child of mostly Chinese descent, or a parent of Chinese descent reading for your child, and coming across that page. Can you seriously not see why the Seuss rights owners decided to stop reprinting it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx
A (genuine) query - if Dr Seuss was from a country other than the US, would the books nominated by the estate have been treated the way they are now, discontinued for portrayal issues 
If the author had been English, or French (or you nominate the country) would this discusson be under consideration)
Is this decision by the estate one specific to US cultural norms (whatever that ia) and not as something other countries would have been insistent about.
If so, why not let other countries decide whether to continue with the purchase of the books. |
Seuss is pretty marginal in Norway. A couple of his books were translated to Norwegian in 1972, and six more in 2005-2012. Searching in a bookstore now, I find none of them in Norwegian, a few of them in English.
We've had a few similar situations here:
- The Swedish publishers of Pippi Longstocking wanted to change the word "negro" in one of the books. Astrid Lindgren was alive, so they asked her, and she was in favour of the change. Just like in this case, there was a flurry of panic among the usual suspects, dishonestly claiming that this was an example of censorship from the government. (I can't find out when this happened, but Lindgren died in 2002.)
- In 2006, the Norwegian publishers of one of Torbjørn Egner's songbooks removed a song about an African child, which has all the cliches you'd expect from a Norwegian writer writing for children in 1954. Again, lots of discussion and controversy.
- And not quite the same, but related: Every year in December, there's a news story about some primary school somewhere deciding to change the usual Christmas celebrations and decorations to a more generic winter celebration, to accomodate a religious minority. The usual suspects write about Muslims threatening Norwegian culture, the school clarifies that they do this because of some Christian minority which regards a lot of the Norwegian Christmas traditions as heathen, and the noise dies down. Until next year.